


Dragon

by pndraa



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: (eventual) MayHill, AU, Au - Elemental Powers, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Femslash, Fights, Fire!Melinda, Gen, Ice!Maria, Memories, Mentions of Sex, Slight OOC, Wind!Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3617382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pndraa/pseuds/pndraa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda May was once SHIELD's greatest fire-type field agent. Then Bahrain came and put her spark out. But maybe, the one who can light it back up happens to be the best ice-type Melinda knows - Maria Hill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fire, Ice

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to the Agents of SHIELD Elemental AU! This one is, like just about everything else I write, Melinda/Maria-centric. Before you go on, just note that this is written in a form where memories or flashbacks are placed in between scenes of the main storyline. The memories are usually in between two horizontal lines, and the first and last sentences are in italics. Putting the entire scene in italics would be too difficult to read! The parts with the swirly, short divider is just a part of the same scene, but it's a break line.  
> So do note that. As the story progresses, chapters do get longer. The last chapter is more of an epilogue than anything else. I won't hold you back any longer. Do keep the memory thing in mind. Let's go!

* * *

 

 _It’s always the same question Maria starts with_. _“How have you been, Melinda?”_

  _‘I feel like I can never escape my own shadows.’_

 _‘Worse than ever, darling._ ’

  True as they were, Melinda never replied with those. Instead, she always went with: “I’m holding up well.”

  “As if,” Maria replied, smiling. “Now come here.”

  She placed an arm around Melinda’s waist and pulled her close. Melinda had once again gotten use to the closeness. Ever since Bahrain, she’d felt uneasy being in physical contact with anyone. But she’d calm herself down when she was with Maria. Besides, she was the person Melinda disclosed the most details about Bahrain to. Now she found herself unknowingly resting her head on the taller woman’s shoulder.

  “So how is administration?” Maria asked.

  “Peaceful,” Melinda said. She hardly found the will to speak anymore, but right now, she did. “Much better than the field.”

  Maria laid her head on Melinda’s. Having conversations in this position on the roof of the SHIELD office was common between the two. Even before Bahrain, the roof was their favourite place in the building. There was a short silence before Maria spoke again.

  “You know, the lower-rank agents still call you the Cavalry.”

  “Even without the flames? How flattering,” Melinda replied. She sighed. Her flames.

  Being a fire-type fighter, they were her one of her favourite attacks and defenses. She didn’t fight anymore, no, but she did miss the other, entertaining factors the flames brought her. Then after Bahrain, along with her motivation to speak and fight, so did the flame within her for, well, more flames.

  It was alright. She didn’t need it for administration. Even better, no more accidentally setting papers and wooden objects on fire. No more waking up from a nightmare to find that the bed’s smoking and so are your hands. Or at least, that’s what Melinda told herself. She actually missed the flames sometimes.

  “You’re still great, you know,” Maria said. “You don’t need flames to be Agent Melinda Qiaolian May.”

  _Fire type. She was the flames, the flames were her._

_“I think I might.”_

 

* * *

 

The layer of ice shatters once more. It scatters across the ground, already filled with a mix of water, ice shards and snowflakes. The room is freezing. And yet, there Maria Hill stood, ice once again covering her clenched fists. She hit the punching bag again. The ice cracks. Twice. It stars chipping. Thrice. The last blow sent by her right hand hits hard, and the ice shatters, as well as sending another cold blast out. The room is a mess.

  And only then when she stops does she notice Melinda leaning against the door frame, watching her train. Maria shook the remaining bits of ice off her hands.

  “How long have you been here?” Maria asks.

  “Long enough for the ice to have begun melting,” Melinda replied. She stepped further into the room. Maria looked down. Indeed, the room was beginning to get warmer, and there were small pools of water on the ground.

  “Phil and I are going for dinner after work. You want to come with us?” Melinda asked.

  “Sure. I should probably clear up first. I’ll meet you downstairs.” And with that, Melinda smiled, and turned to leave. Maria turned back to the punching bag and made sure that Melinda was out of sight before she continued.

  There was something she felt like she wanted to do, and so she did it. Freezing the outside of the punching bag, she took a step back. Taking a step back, she swung her leg up and kicked the punching bag. The ice cracked and shattered, sending the shards across the other end of the room. Maria stood there, feeling much more relaxed. She needed that.

  Swiping a hand, the ice and water moved to a corner of the room. She gave it one last look before she walked off to change out of her training gear.

 

~

 

“What the hell do we do now?”

  They looked at the bodies on the floor, and one pressed against the brick wall.

  “We could just leave them. We’ve never really cleaned up bodies before.”

  “They aren’t dead.” Maria gave the one closest to her a nudge with her foot, and he didn't respond. “Nothing too illegal happened.”

  “Who are they, anyway?” Melinda asked, taking a step closer.

  “Agents. From a smaller organization,” Phil replied. The logo on their jackets gave them away. “You do know that this means that this attack was probably planned.”

  “We need to report to HQ,” Maria said, bending down to look through one agent’s things. “There’s nothing useful on them.”

  “Any communication devices?”

  “They’re frozen. Quite literally,” Maria said. "Sorry."

  And behind the other two, Melinda stood there, heart still pounding. Everything happened so fast she hardly had time to react. They were just walking to a small diner, when out of absolutely nowhere, they were attacked. Of course, she didn't need to attack back. For someone who lost their powers, she’d need a lot of strength to do much damage on her attackers. So Phil and Maria handled it.

  Phil, an air type, managed to blast one of the attackers against the wall, while Maria froze the legs of the other three. From there Phil took down another, and she and Maria knocked out the other two. Melinda was quite sure that it took them less than two minutes for them to take the surprise attackers by surprise.

  They did what needed to be done. HQ was alerted of the ambush, details were given, and the three continued on their way.

  But just for once, Melinda felt helpless. She didn't contribute much to taking the attackers down. Really, what was she without her flames? Once she was the strongest fighter and best flame-type in SHIELD. Now she couldn't even help take out four lower agents. Maria flashed her a smile, and she smiled back. Melinda felt quite out of place. Perhaps she missed her flames.

 

* * *

 

 _Their arms hit together again, this time sending out glowing red sparks and bits of ice upon collision._ Melinda pulls away and sends a kick towards Maria, who moved out of the way and planted her feet firmly against the ground. Melinda knew what was coming next.

  Unlike Melinda, Maria enjoyed letting her ice do the fighting for her. She’d send out shards and let them hit her enemies from afar. She’d shoot cold blasts and freeze the limbs of others. Only after her powers weakened them did she physically land the final blow. Melinda, however, fought _with_ her flames. She’s set her fists aflame when punching, and let the strength of her body and the force of the fire blend together. She’d set trails of fire when kicking. She rarely ever let the fire fight for her.

  So when Maria’s feet locked in position and her eyes squinted, Melinda counter-attacked. She let her flames spread across the place she stood on. Then, blue sparks shot from beneath Maria, and a layer of ice covered the floor. Melinda melted them easily and sent another blow to Maria, who raised a shield of ice up.

  They continued sparring, clashing and hitting and melting. To anybody watching, they made it look so easy. They were both well-trained and they knew each other’s patterns well. But to the both of them, sparring with their elements was dangerous. One wrong move and the two could end up never being able to use their powers properly anymore.

  With them, careful was an understatement.

  Their sparring could hardly be called natural. They yelled out warnings and commands and ducked and jumped. They knew how badly their powers would affect one another. So it came to the part they were both excited for and dreading. It was a move they commonly used in combat – but never with each other. The elements were in tune with nature; ice repelled fire as much as the north of a magnet repelled the south.

  Melinda and Maria took extreme caution when they brought in their fists. Melinda set hers ablaze. Being a fire type naturally, fire didn’t hurt her. Maria froze hers over. As an ice type from a long, pure line of them, she was practically immune to the cold. Then they struck.

  The ice was colder and the flames hotter.

  The strike was more powerful.

  The sparks were stronger.

  The collision was far more forceful.

  And it felt horribly, horribly _wrong._

  Then they both fell back. Only then did they notice, somehow almost at the same time, why it was so strange. Maria’s left hand was a deep brown. Melinda’s right hand was a dark indigo. It was exactly what they feared – for the ice and fire to mix. It was silent for a moment, and then they instinctively checked if the hands still worked.

  Maria’s left hand was weaker. It couldn’t make the usual extravagant ice shards anymore; they just formed as thick and frozen snow. She was certain that through the dark, burnt layer, her veins were turning blue as she activated the ice. That never happened for ice types.

  Melinda’s right hand was similarly weaker. She wasn’t able to make flames too strong. The most she got was a flicker, an unsteady flame, and a lot of smoke.

  _Over time it had gotten better. The ice properly formed and the flame didn’t keep dying out. But for years of their lives, Melinda and Maria had the element mark of one another on their hands._


	2. Bahrain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, missions don't go as planned. Melinda can say that she's had an experience of this, and would not like anyone else to go through a similar situation.

“I’m going on a mission tomorrow.”

  “How long?” Melinda asks. She continued with her work, not needing to look up from her desk. She would know who that voice belonged to anytime.

  “Two days, give or take,” Maria replied, taking a seat beside Melinda.

  She continued stapling and filing the papers. “Location?”

  “We’re not too sure yet.”

  Only then did Melinda pause, and turn to look at Maria. She never liked missions now, not ever since her last and final (for a long time) went so wrong. It made matters worse that the location was still unclear. She didn’t want the same things happen to Maria. Melinda wasn't sure if she loved Maria more as a sister, as friends, or as a lover. All she knew was that she gave a damn what happened to her. Her next words were somewhat expected.

  “Be careful.”

  “Don’t worry,” Maria said. She could see the mix of fear and concern on Melinda’s face clearly. “We’re just tracking down, maybe taking down, some of the agents who tried to attack us on Tuesday. They're up to something strange. It's much bigger a deal than we expected, but still quite small.”

  “You’ll be fine?” Melinda asked. Of course, they both wouldn't know, but she just needed some form of confirmation.

  “This isn’t even one of the larger missions. I’m going to be okay.”

  “I know. I just really want to know that you’ll be safe.”

  “You’re beginning to sound like my mom. I promise you, I’ll try to come back in once piece.”

  Melinda gave her a small smile, trying to make herself feel better. “Alright.”

  Maria smiled back and stood up. “I’ll see you.”

  And as she walked off, Melinda couldn’t help but watch her leave, walking out of her office and up to her own. Somehow, Melinda had a feeling that something terrible was up ahead – but then again, wasn’t there always?

 

* * *

 

 

_This was interesting, wasn’t it? Who would’ve known that someone with such powers ever existed?_

Melinda found herself on the plane headed towards Bahrain that day. Less than 24 hours ago they still hadn’t located the individual, and now, Melinda and a few of her coworkers were being briefed on what to do. The usual phrases like “potential danger” and “do not hesitate to use force” surfaced once again, but Melinda hardly broke a sweat.

  Missions to make contact with particularly gifted persons never turned out the way they wanted, but Melinda knew what to do in case everything spiraled down. It always worked for her, and she was determined to make sure this time that her backup plan didn’t need to come into play.

  Three hours later they landed on the outskirts of a town. Melinda never really knew what the other agents did – but she remembered what she did. They were having problems finding the exact location of where the person was, and they had spread out to separate places trying to find him. Melinda went off by herself.

  Eventually she ended up asking a twelve-year old local that spoke broken English if she knew anything. If she remembered correctly, the girl said her name was Amira. Melinda was quite certain that they’d never be able to find the gifted person. Then the young girl showed her to an old building that looked like it was going to fall apart at any moment. The two, oblivious to much danger, walked closer to it.

  Everything that happened in the next moment was blurred in Melinda’s mind. Amira was seized. Assailants charged out from the building and towards Melinda, who failed to take the girl and was now standing there, not sure of what to do. Although she didn’t know it at the time, the head agent swore that every civilian person in a radius around the building had run away.

  So there Melinda stood, alone, with one pistol, without contact with anyone. Worst of all, there were about three assailants headed right for her.

  And before she realized what she was doing, she had taken them out. There was a mess of flames from her, and the agents were lying unconscious on the ground. Her hands were shaking, and she could feel her heart clearly pounding away inside of her. Her knees were going to give in on her at any moment. Melinda hated to admit it, but she was terrified. She entered the building anyway.

  She could have gagged from the smell itself. It was pungent mix of blood, chemicals, vomit, and things she didn’t ever want to think of again.

  Then, six more enemy agents ran towards her. She sick from the smell of the place, but managed to take them down; two shot, three burnt, and the last one barely out. Melinda looked behind her and pushed a body out of the way. Looking into the building, she stepped in.

  “For the girl,” she told herself. She whispered, but the echo made it sound so much louder. She opened the door wider. The hall in front of her was a gaping void. It was hollow and empty, and led into nothingness. With the faint light from the outside, Melinda was able to see outlines of blood and mold on the wall. Hesitant, she shut the door behind her. The soft thump made her even more fearful. It seemed like no one else was inside. She wasn’t able to see anyone or anything, and they probably wouldn’t see her either.

  Carefully, she raised her palm. She lit a flame, and it cast a warm orange light on the walls around her. It hardly made her feel better about the situation. So she walked. She walked down the seemingly endless corridor, through the turns and doors, each step she took making her feel times more claustrophobic and scared.

   “For me. For the girl. _For everyone I know,_ ” she didn’t say it out this time, afraid that she’d draw unwanted attention. She was getting close to the end, she knew it. Her backup plan was pushed far behind in the back of her mind. Everything she thought was familiar was tossed out a window.

  Everything was far too silent. Every footstep she took echoed across the halls. She was sure that she could hear her heart beat against her chest. She could hear herself breathe. She kept hearing things that wasn’t there – other people’s footsteps, whispers, knocks and creaks. The noises made her more paranoid by the second. She didn’t want to stay in here any longer. So she continued on her path, making sure that she wasn’t just going in circles.

  By now, Melinda had come across at least two locked doors and a flight of stairs leading upwards. The concrete bricks beneath her felt uneven and crumbled. At any moment they could cave in on her, and she’d find herself falling into nothingness. She pushed the thoughts aside and let the flame on her palm glow brighter.

  Wrong move.

  The light triggered three more guards, and on the already terrible stairs, Melinda had more problems. One was pushed off the stars and sent tumbling down, into the dark hallway. The other two were burnt on places Melinda couldn’t identify. Scared, she ran up the stairs. Anything else happening on the stairs would make her go mad.

  She took careful steps throughout the building, the second level making her feel worse than the first. The thought of having more than one level to the god-forsaken hell of a building just made her queasy. She turned one corner, and then another. Both were dead ends. Every time she turned back she dreaded what she’d come across. A face in the darkness? Red, glinting eyes?

  The monsters that plagued Melinda’s childhood flew into her once again, and she lurched over. She was going to throw up. The bloodshot eyes of the black creature under her bed were more vivid than ever. The inhuman looks of the human-like thing in her closet seemed so close. The yellowing bones and bloodied skull of her old nightmares were only one more step away.

  That was right when the building felt ten times longer than it originally had. It was so dark that it was the equivalent to the empty infinity of a blank night. She was revisited by all her imaginary demons. She was hopeless.

  Melinda was not used to this feeling. This feeling of uncertainty, of inadequacy. This was not Melinda. She had this urge to rip the walls out with her bare hands, right there, and run away. But she couldn’t. She had someone to save. More than one someone. The other SHIELD agents were probably in the building by now. Melinda stopped. She closed her eyes and put out her flame. She put a hand on the wall for support. She felt something sticky and thick on her palm and drew it away immediately. She pressed her lips together and let herself cry.

   It never helped, no, but she just needed to let something out before she continued. And before she could open her eyes and re-ignite the palm flame, something silent crept up from behind her.

  It grabbed her violently and wrapped its arm around her neck, choking her. At least she knew it was human. Yet it was silent. It was as if her own shadow had turned on her. Melinda lit her arms with fire and blindly attacked her attacker. If it weren’t for a brush on her sleeve and the footsteps of someone escaping, Melinda would have thought it to actually be her shadow.

   She could feel her own soul trickling out of her bit by bit every second she remained in the building. She needed to do what had to be done, and go, quickly. So she tried to get some light.

  Her hands didn’t work anymore. Nor did her legs. Or the flames. Melinda was far too gone to return. She held her breath and pushed herself upright. Letting the breath go, she charged herself up.

  “ _For the girl._ ”

  And there, just like that, the spark within her lit back on. There was a spur, and Melinda was sure that as she sprinted down the hallways, and past the heavy stone door, she lit the path on fire. The last time she recalled using fire was after she kicked the double doors open.

  Indeed, there everyone was. Her coworkers. Her friends. _Amira._ The girl she’d cared about and grown attached to in less than a day, all tied up and help captive.

  In the middle of the room, stood exactly who she was looking for. A man with a gift more brilliant than she ever knew. He could manipulate time – and by extension, space, and the fabric of the universe. Melinda was angry. No, furious. That wasn’t correct – she was outright _pissed._

  “What’s all this for?” Melinda asked, her voice soft but firm. “Why do you need hostages?”

  “You’ll see,” the man replied.

  And what Melinda did next scared everybody in the room and earned her the nickname “The Cavalry”. It was something Melinda half regretted, yet did not regret in the slightest.

  “Maybe,” Melinda started. “I won’t!”

  Without thinking much, she threw herself at the man. He was taken by surprise. She tried to kick him, sending a blow of fire from her leg, but then she felt herself freeze in time. The fire before her was still moving – just at a pace so slow that a tortoise would’ve laughed. Melinda’s insides felt frozen too. She couldn’t breathe properly. The man stepped away, far from the flames crawling through mid-air. Then he resumed the time bend on Melinda. Her leg landed back down and the fire burnt. But there wasn’t any effect.

  They fought like this a while more. The man dodged, and froze, and resumed time. Melinda kicked and punched and conjured flames, but she couldn’t do it. Then she had a plan. A plan to trick him.

  She ran forward as if to attack. She felt the regular sensation of being stopped in time while everything else in the world played out. Melinda didn’t care. She returned to normal yet again, but this time, she spun around. There was a fireball that took up most of her vision. I sped forward, and Melinda felt herself freeze again. But the flames kept on going. There was a screech from the man, and the smell of burning and rot, which blended in nicely with the smell of the entire building. Smoke took up the whole room, and shouts and yells came from the captives. Melinda felt the time bend lift. The man was gone. She, Amira, and her coworkers were all saved. Melinda had done it. She closed her eyes (it was just a moment, she swore).

  But the smoke cleared, and soon she came face to face with ashes, several charred bones, a room full of terrified agents and a small girl, and a wall on fire. Her legs were going to collapse. Her heart was out of control. Melinda’s demons couldn’t leave.

  _She had just burnt a whole man to ashes. A man they were supposed to contain, help. This wasn't close to what she wanted._

  And along with her mind, her vision went blank.

  An hour later she woke up to endless walls before her. Darkness, empty halls, and loneliness. Her heart was racing. Was she back in the building? She kicked and hit the empty air, struggling with nothing. Then the walls disappeared, light streamed in, and it all came to a stop.

  “Melinda, you’re alright. Everything’s safe,” Coulson said. Melinda opened her eyes. Sunlight. Familiar places and people. She had escaped hell. But she didn’t smile or reply. A part of her was abandoned in the building that was (thankfully) going down in flames. Then Melinda saw someone that made her feel more secure than anything ever had. In the corner of the SHIELD plane, Amira was being treated for minor scratches. She smiled at Melinda.

  “Are you okay?” She asked, her accent still obvious. Melinda nodded.

   “I have been offer to help out at company, but I must return family. Ma is worried,” Amira said.

  “You don’t want to stay?” Melinda asked, her tone lower than before.

  “No, sorry. Thank you.”

  "Really?"

  "Let the girl go, Melinda," Phil said.

  "No thank you," Amira replied, smiling.

  "Let the girl go."

  Melinda nodded. "Alright. Goodbye,"

  Melinda was upset about it for a long time. Amira was young. She had potential. She had been places and seen things nobody deserved to see. Sure, she had her family to return to, Melinda would’ve liked to have her around just a while longer.

  “Just let the girl go,” Phil said once again, placing a hand on her shoulder. And for the first time since the incident, Melinda smiled, this once at Amira. She waved and smiled back, and was escorted out and back home by two agents, out of sight.

  _How was Amira so cheerful even after she’d just watched a woman burn another man alive? Melinda wanted to know. But as it always was, she never got to meet the girl again._

* * *

 

Melinda couldn’t deny that she felt dead from that day onwards. Still, in that moment where she shot out the fireball, she had felt more liberated and alive than ever. Maybe the shot bad drained out the spirit from her. She didn’t know.

  “May, we’re going home now. Are you coming with?” Another administration staff asked.

  “No, I’ll leave later.”

  “Alright, then. Goodnight.”

  Only then did Melinda realize that she had spent the last forty minutes staring into blank space, drifting off into the distance. She closed her eyes and rested her head in her hands. The lights from the other cubicles flicked off, and only the light in Melinda’s office was left switched on. The darkness seemed to seep into her once again, and the feeling of loneliness settled in again. She should leave. And as she packed up her things, her eye landed on the dark blue, indigo scar across her right hand.

  For once, Melinda felt a sudden rush of dread for someone else.

  Maria was going on a mission to a place she doesn’t know about yet. To locate a group of enemy agents. Melinda wondered, what was to happen if the same things happened to her precious Maria? Waking up every morning only to feel nothing but relief for having survived yet another night in your own mind? Fearing your shadows because there’s just this chance that it will turn on you?

  Melinda opened her eyes. That couldn’t happen to Maria, no. Since young she’d been strong – telling herself and everyone around her that she was independent and in control. She wasn’t disturbed by her own mind. Maria was a different person. She closed up so much that there were no holes to let the dark and silence crawl into. Melinda took time to let Maria open up to her.

  She took up her bag, and gave her desk a last look, checking for anything left behind. She switched off the lights, leaving her alone in the dark office. But outside, people walked about, and lights in the corridor were still on. Melinda wasn’t alone.

   As she left the building and out into the open night air, she had some thinking time to herself. Not having the convenience of fire at her fingertips anytime, anywhere, was quite troublesome. She missed the feeling of the flame dancing on her hands. Sometimes she forgot that they weren’t there anymore. She’s lift up a palm or finger for light, and nothing would come out. She’d resorted to carrying a flashlight with her, because she still wasn’t used to not having even a small bit of light.

  She told herself that even though the fire was warm and bright and good, they had their problems too. Many times had she woken up from strange dreams only to find her hands smoking and a large hole burnt through her sheets. Many times has she stormed off, angry, only to look behind and see a trail of flames and smoke on the ground.

  With her emotions now in this state, having her fire affected by feeling was a bad idea. It was more pro than con now that her flames didn’t work anymore.

  Or so she told herself.


	3. Two Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two days. Two days since Maria left for her mission. Two days since she stepped aboard the jet plane. Two days since Melinda began worrying for someone else, every moment of the day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The feedback I've been receiving on this is pretty great so far! Thank you guys. Anyway, as a small note, I want to mention that I've already written way ahead, but I'm uploading this as slowly as I can to hold it out more (I was at chapter 6 when I uploaded the first two chapters).
> 
> As a small reminder, again, the text between the horizontal lines that begin and end in italics are scenes from (Melinda's) memories, and the normal text is just the present-time plot.

Two days. Two days since Maria left for her mission. Two days since she stepped aboard the jet plane. Two days since Melinda began worrying for someone else, every moment of the day. It took one day for things to go spiraling down.

  On the first day, things were alright enough. Melinda was very clearly distracted. According to Victoria Hand, there was a certain look on her face that came up when she was thinking about Maria.

  They never quite got why Melinda kept doing that. Speculations from Coulson, Victoria and Jasper Sitwell came around, and everything sounded like they’d gotten it from the rookie agents (“You miss her with all your soul” and “you don’t want her out of your sight for more than an hour”.) Melinda avoided telling them that she was scared for Maria by rolling her eyes and letting her friends make small jokes about it.

  “You know Melinda, your eyes look so distant. It’s almost as if your mind followed your girlfriend up that plane,” Victoria teased.

 “Not my girlfriend.”

  “Wife? Eternal soul mate?”

  Melinda smiled. “Not even close.”

  And just like that, Victoria carried on with her small jokes.

  “The ying to your yang?” She asked.

  “No, she’s obviously May’s other half,” Jasper added.

  They carried on. Melinda let them, the jokes not disturbing her in the slightest. Besides, they did hold some amount of truth. Yes, Maria was the ice to her fire, quite literally. Ying and yang. That was cheesy, sure, but Melinda had to admit that’s what it was.

  “The wind beneath your wings!”

  Melinda couldn’t help but grin even wider. They were right about the amount of times Maria popped into her head.

   _What was Maria doing? Where was she now? Was she injured?_ There were several possibilities Melinda could think of, and none of them were very positive.

  She’d been away from Maria for more than a week before, but this time, things were different, at least to Melinda. The entire operation itself just felt shady and dangerous from head to toe. And though Melinda didn’t want to believe it, but her heart told her that thing were going to go awry. Sure enough they did.

  So on the second day, Victoria and Jasper came to lunch with a whole new list of ‘Things Maria is to Melinda.’ For the first half of the day, things were as per normal. Then in the second half, Melinda heard something she didn’t want to – rumors about Maria’s mission. She never listened to office gossip, but just that once, she did.

  From what she had gathered, it appeared that Maria had gone missing in the foreign country, along with another team member. The other three were found unscathed, but not sure of where the two had gone. Melinda was worried. Gone missing? That was even worse than finding out that she was severely injured or had been blown up. That way, she would be limited to just one terrible scenario. Gone missing was just another way of saying ‘it’s up to you to wonder what happened to Maria’.

  Victoria and Jasper had obviously heard about the rumors too, as they gave her an encouraging smile as they walked past her, and for once, did not drop comments about how distracted Melinda looked. It was a big deal in the office. After all, the deputy director was missing? Scary stuff.

  Melinda ignored their words as best as she could, though it was difficult. She had gone for a majority of the day with the feeling of dread and uncertainty in her stomach. She told herself that it wasn’t true – rumors like this were spread all the time. Hell, if she wasn’t wrong, the agents in the academy still thought that she’d ridden on a horse into a building and killed a hundred armed men with her bare hands and two pistols. For all she knew, all that happened was that Maria’s signal got cut off, but she beat a couple of dudes up and was now on the plane with her full team back to HQ.

  When she was preparing to leave for the day, she was approached by Coulson. Nothing was strange there.

  “Melinda, follow me up to the main office,” he said. “There’s something we need to tell you about.”

  Melinda’s heart could’ve stopped right there. She knew what was coming. Instead, her heart ran faster. It was going to be about Maria, she just knew it. She took up her bag and followed Coulson silently. They went up to the mission HQ.

  “We know that you’re close to Maria Hill,” he started. “So you probably don’t want to hear this. Maybe you already have.”

  Melinda looked downwards. She felt her breath leave her lungs. Coming from Coulson, it would be true.

  “At seven twenty-eight this morning, Maria Hill and Agent Owen Clayton were reported missing by their three other agents. Communications with both have been cut off. At one fifty, Clayton was found out cold in the back of the building, but Maria has not been found yet.”

  Melinda’s eyes widened. Coulson wasn’t finished.

  “In about five hours’ time, we are sending out another team to search for her, along with the agents already there,” Coulson continued. “You’re welcome to join us if you wish. After all, you’re one of our best ex-field agents.”

  Melinda gave a moment of consideration. She wanted so badly to go out and to look for Maria. But what could she do? She was quite terrified of the dark, the silence and so many things, though she wouldn’t say it.

  “I don’t think I’ll go,” she replied.

  Coulson nodded, ready to go. “If you change your mind, we’re still open to you coming along. Just give me a call within the next four hours.”

  “Alright,” Melinda said. She watched Coulson leave, and turned to go herself.

* * *

_There’s a path of ice and snowflakes on the floor. Maria’s upset again, that’s for sure._

  Not thinking much, Melinda followed the trail on the floor. As much as she hated her own fire for making a trail behind her when she was angry or sad, it was quite easy to use when locating someone else. She wasn’t surprised when the trail brought her to the staircase that had roof access. That was something that the two of them both knew – when either had problems, they could be found on the roof of the SHIELD office.

  It was a peaceful place. Hardly anybody ever went up there. So Melinda climbed the stairs with some difficulty (they had been covered with slippery, melting ice) and pushed open the familiar faded red door.

  “Maria,” she called out. There, on an old plastic chair on the roof, Maria sat slouching over with her head in her hands. She turned around and smiled at Melinda.

  “There’s snow everywhere, isn’t there?” She asked.

  “And ice.”

  Maria laughed. “God, aren’t I a big mess today. There are so many things they want me to do, and I can’t remember what to do for three of them. Best of all, two thirds are due _tomorrow._ ”

  Melinda sat down beside her and wrapped and arm around her. “Paperwork or the usual strange SHIELD activity.”

  “Both,” Maria replied. “Stark’s been challenging Thor and Rogers to his whatever the hell Stark does, and the result is a room full of broken glass and terrified agents. There’s damage that needs to be covered and repairs over sighted.”

  “He didn’t take your previous warning seriously?”

  “No! I swear - if things don’t go well today, I’m really going to lock Stark in a dark room for five hours. If he doesn’t think SHIELD has one, he’d be surprised. We have seven.”

  “Five hours doesn’t seem like enough time for this much stress on you,” Melinda said. “Try eight. He’ll never dare to do anything again.”

  Maria laughed. “Last chance for him. If anything he does gives anyone a headache, he’s in for the Stark treatment.”

  Melinda looked at her, confused.

  “Five hours of dark room and three more of being nagged at by Pepper, Fury and me,” Maria clarified. “We named it after him because that’s what he’s going to be getting.”

  “Natasha gets a headache just by hearing his name.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Melinda laughed. As obnoxious as he was, Tony Stark was useful to SHIELD. If not, he wouldn’t still be allowed into their facilities. Maria laid her head on Melinda’s shoulder. She closed her eyes. She had things to do, yes, but she really wanted to relax a bit more before settling all the work.

  “Wait there’s something I should show you,” Melinda suddenly said. Maria sat up properly.

  “What is it?” She asked.

  Melinda held both hands together, both her palms at a distance from one another. She stayed like that for a moment, before her flames crept out slowly, mixing together. She controlled them so that they spun around one another and mixed into a nice circle. Maria watched intently. She had no idea what Melinda was doing.

  The circle spread out in a line. Then Melinda dragged it out, controlling with one hand. Her actions were gentle and steady. With a well-practiced flick of her other hand, a layer around the line of flames disappeared into grey smoke, and the fire took the shape of a small dragon.

  Maria stared at it, awe-struck. She’s heard of elemental dragons, but this was the first time she’d seen one being made.

  “How do you do that?” She asked, as Melinda made the dragon fly around the two.

  “Practice,” she replied. It made a loop, and out from its mouth, more flames came out. “It’s still not perfect yet. I need to work on its head and the scales on its body need more detail.”

  “Melinda, you made a _fire dragon._ That’s the best thing I’ve ever seen.”

  The dragon started to disappear, tail first, then the body slowly going, and lastly, its head.

  “It’s even so majestic when it goes away,” Maria said.

  “It’s definitely a step up from the fire bunny,” Melinda said.

  Maria smiled. “The fire bunny was cute.”

  “So is your ice wolf.”

  Maria, still listening to Maria, created a small rabbit from snow, and a much larger wolf with ice. The bunny hopped around innocently, and the wolf leaped forward and swallowed it whole. But the ice, while still frosted, was transparent. The little snow bunny was visible inside its stomach.

  “That’s just a mix of talented and sad. I mean, I can still see the whole rabbit in its stomach,” Melinda said.

  “That’s the point of the ice wolf.”

  “Your ice creatures are adorable,” Melinda said, kissing Maria on the cheek.

  “Well, your fire creatures are amazing,” Maria replied.

  “Palms out,” Melinda said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Palms out, I’ll show you how to make a dragon.”

  _Just like that, Maria forgot about her responsibilities. She wasn’t proud of it, not at all, and she wasn't proud of the first few  dragons she produced. But that was exactly what she needed._

* * *

Only when the bus stops does Melinda snap out of her thoughts. She looks out the window. There was only one more stop until her’s. The bus door opens and a couple sitting in the fourth row gets up and walks out. Melinda and the driver are the only ones left on the bus now.

  Melinda can still remember how to make the fire dragon. Sure, it had been years since she had last done it, but she never really forgot the feeling of the flames on her hands. Looking down at her hands, she began trying to form the dragon. The twirls and stresses of her hands were familiar to her. She didn’t know exactly when was the last time she’d tried to form imaginary fire, but she felt terribly nostalgic doing it.

  There was a simpler time where she and Maria could hang out on the roof and talk. Now, though the roof was always as vacant as ever, she hardly spoke anymore, and Maria was too busy to step anywhere out of schedule for even three seconds. She missed things the way they were.

  She wasn’t going to lie – she really wanted her flames back. They were the energy within her. They were literally a burning force inside her heart. She missed who she was before the nightmare that was Bahrain took over her. But no matter how hard she tried, she was never able to revert back to her old self.

  She stopped. She wasn’t going to be able to use her flames ever again, wasn’t she? Melinda was going to be better off if she forgot the magic of the burning fire against her palm, weightless and luminous.

  _‘See?’_ She thought. ‘ _Thinking about something else can take your mind off of Maria-_ ’

  Maria. Melinda groaned. She was that close to removing the worry from her insides, and now they came back. She had too many problems, and no one to talk to them about. Then again she hardly spoke about her feelings to anybody, even Maria.

  She shook her head. She didn’t want to concentrate on her problems now. After being in the field for at least a decade, she couldn’t say that her administration tasks were anywhere near tiring. But that day, she felt worn out. So she just wanted to get home, take a shower, change out of her work clothes, and go to bed. The usual houses that passed by her window every night when she took the bus home passed by her once again. They reached a road that Melinda, in her mind, dubbed ‘that road that means I should prepare to get off now’.

  She took up her bag. As the bus doors opened again and she said goodnight to the old driver, now the only one left in the bus, her mind returned to that day on the roof with Maria. That was the first day Maria had tried to make her ice dragon, something she had never known she was capable of.

  Melinda walked a short path over to her apartment block. Walk two flights of stairs up. Hear the soft music coming from her neighbour’s house. Dig through her bag to find the keys to her house. Unlock the door, go in, place your bag and coat on the coat rack, and proceed with your nightly routine. It was always like that.

  That night, she concentrated more on her own thoughts. She didn’t hear her neighbour’s music. She didn’t smell or see the black, shapeless smoke coming from her left hand. She only noticed it when she brought the keys up to the keyhole, and her eyes came across her hand, enveloped in the smoke. She froze.

  Almost instantly, the smoke died down. The ends scattered in the air, out of her sight. Melinda closed her eyes. Maybe she was just more exhausted than she knew. Opening them again, a thin layer of greying smoke still remained around her hand.

  She didn’t have the slightest idea as to what was happening. She waved the smoke off, and carried on with her night. Even with the feeling of being nervous for Maria, she got by her nightly routine as usual. But before she went to bed, however, her hands began to give off the smoke uncontrollably. There wasn’t any flame – just the smoke. No matter how hard she tried, they didn’t want to leave. Eventually she threw them into the sink, half-filled with water. It bubbled softly, and the smokes stopped.

  This time, however, she had another feeling in her gut. How long had it been since she left the SHIELD office? If she remembered correctly, it was two hours and forty minutes. Coulson’s offer officially ended in one hour and twenty minutes.

  If Melinda had learnt anything in the last forty-six years of her life, it was to always trust intuition.

  So she dried her hands, which had (very thankfully) stopped smoking, and picked up her phone. She called Coulson.

  “You’re changing your mind?” He asked.

  “What, no hello?” Melinda replied. “Is it too late for me to join?”

  “Not at all. Come over. Smith owes me ten bucks now.”

  Melinda smirked. He knew her well. So once again, she took up her coat and her bag, and switching off the lights in the apartment, she headed back to the SHIELD HQ.


	4. Once Upon a Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy, is this chapter long. The build in the first section is relatively slow, so if you want to get to the back part where the more interesting things happen, go right ahead. Also, that being said, the back part of the first section is where the frickle-frackles happen, with only slight details and not anything too explicit. Just to warn you first. And afterwards it doesn't happen again.

_When the rookie agents joke about them having slept together once, they really aren’t wrong. It’s happened. To the agents it was probably a made-up story the two played along with, but they hid it in plain sight all the while._

 It had been a tiring and lonely week forthe two. They had spent four days on a mission in a small American town, during Mid-October, and then went on only to find that it was near impossible to make contact with HQ.

  So when they finally got to make contact, they cut out the details and called for further instructions. They got back the helpful ‘wait in a motel nearby while we send an extraction team, if anyone is bleeding to death a hospital should suffice’ directions. It was something that happened far too commonly after missions.

   That time it was just the both of them. So they checked in, both of them looking like they’d been flung of the sides of a cliff. They blended in well with everyone else there. There was group of people who looked like they were both backpacking, and ready to give up on backpacking. There was a couple who were obviously each other’s one night stands. There was a bunch of ecstatic teenagers on a road trip, too saturated to sleep one more night in a car. A middle-aged woman who looked like she needed to run away from reality, maybe just for the weekend, and several more people, some of whom were shady and suspicious, and a few more that looked like the average person you’d see daily.

  Maria’s hair was still in the messy bun, her right pants leg rolled up with a soaked bandage around her leg. She was quite certain that her wrist was fractured. Melinda’s face and hands were dirtied with soot and dust, and she walked with a limp. They had put their weapons in Melinda’s backpack for a fear of scaring off anyone they met.

  And indeed, when they walked into the motel, the few people in the lobby gave them weird stares. They were used to it, though. They’d just walked down several streets in the same attire; all while being given strange looks.

  However, the woman at the counter didn’t seem disturbed at all. In fact, she acted like this was a daily occurrence. As the two approached the counter, she scribbled away, not needing to look up.

  “How many rooms do you want?” She asked. Maria and Melinda shared a glance.

  “One, please.”

  “Any special requirements?”

  “No,” Melinda replied. The woman turned around and took a key off a hook on the cupboard. She passed it to them.

  “Room 4-6. Fourth floor, second room to the right. Now, please register here,” she said, placing a thick book and a pen on the table. They registered and paid, and soon enough, were on their way up to their room.

  Their room was one of the better one’s they’d seen. It was small, sure, but comfortable and clean enough. There was a queen bed by the side of the room. Maria and Melinda had been in enough situations like this to not have cared much about that. It wasn’t a problem for them. Melinda placed her bag down by the side of the door.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” Maria muttered, pulling her hair out of the bun. She walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

  Melinda sat down on an armchair. She was relieved to finally be sitting. Her ankle had been sprained for the last day or so, and she didn’t want to stand up much more. And for that while, it was quiet in that room, the only sound being the running water from the bathroom.

  A while later Maria came out from the bathroom, her body wrapped in a towel. The wound on her leg was washed and clear – there was a deep gash across it, with several more scratches around it. She flashed a smile at Melinda.

  “Hey, I’m done with the bathroom. You can go in now,” Maria said. She went over to the bag and took out her spare clothes.

  “Alright,” Melinda replied. She got off the chair, stumbling a bit due to her ankle.

  “Are you feeling better? Need help?” Maria asked, supporting Melinda.

  “It’s fine, thanks. I’m just tired,” Melinda replied. Maria let go of her and moved aside.

  “Same,” Maria said. She gathered up her clothes and walked to the other side of the room.

  Only when Melinda entered the bathroom did Maria change into her clothes. She rolled up her right pants leg carefully. The material pressing against her injury sent a searing pain through her leg. She walked over to the bag and found the bandages, and wrapped it around her wound gingerly. It still hurt badly. After several minutes, red patches began appearing on the bandages again. Perhaps it was worse than she thought. And soon Melinda came out after her shower, already dressed in her spare clothes.

  “How’s your leg?” Melinda asked, drying her hair with a towel.

  “It’s still bleeding, but better than before,” Maria replied.

  Melinda hung up the towel on a hook.

  “So are we going to bed now, or do you want to go for dinner?” She asked.

  Maria looked at the grey clock on the wall. “Mel, it’s ten o’ clock. I’m quite sure it’s too late for dinner. Besides, I’m not hungry.”

  “I was ready to fall asleep in the shower. Let’s go to sleep.”

  The two climbed into the bed, Maria going in first. Melinda went in behind her and covered the blanket over most of her body. She closed her eyes, feeling relaxed. It felt like it was far too long since she got to be in a comfortable bed. Maria pressed closer to her.

  “It’s been a while since we’ve been made to share a bed, huh?” Maria asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t mind it, though. It’s far too cold outside. I’d probably set fire to the bed in my sleep,” Melinda muttered.

  “What, and sleeping with an ice type’s any better? I’m not surprised if I feel like an ice pack right now,” Maria whispered.

  Melinda smiled, wrapping her arms around Maria. “You’re as warm as most normal human beings.”

  Their bodies were now just a few centimeters apart. They’ve never been that close before. But they’re both far too tired to care.

  “Aren’t you supposed to like the cold?” Melinda asked.

  “Tolerate it – yes. Unhealthy need to constantly be in cold places although you’ve never liked it? Yes, actually. Enjoy it? No,” Maria said.

  Maria buried her face into the curve of Melinda’s neck. She relaxed in the warmth, smiling.

  “Goodnight, Mel,” Maria said sleepily, moving further away by a bit.

  “Goodnight,” Melinda replied.

  Right then and there, Melinda could’ve simply fallen asleep, with Maria still in her arms, and share an awkward moment in the morning. But that wasn’t the path she chose. Maybe it was the sleep acting there, but she opened her eyes just once more, and watched Maria slowly drift into slumber.

  And in the peace of the late night, Melinda kissed her, first on the forehead, then down on the bridge of her nose. She was prepared to stop there. Then Maria opened her eyes, and leaned in to kiss Melinda on her lips. They had a moment together. Then Maria pulled away, both of them not saying anything else. Maria fell asleep soon enough, as told by her gentle breaths and curled up position.

  Before Melinda slept, however, she had one question – why did she feel the need to kiss Maria? Surely it didn’t mean anything? Maria had been her best friend for years now; she didn’t want to mess everything up. But maybe, she wasn’t so much messing things up as she was taking it to another, more intimate, level.

 

~

 

That was just their first night in the motel. That morning, as Melinda predicted, they shared that awkward moment where they woke up face-to-face and finally had to speak to each other about what had happened the previous night.

  “We kissed last night, right? I wasn’t just dreaming,” Maria asked, eyes wide, staring at Melinda.

  “Yeah, we did,” Melinda replied. “That didn’t necessarily mean anything, right?”

  “Not at all. We were sleepy, lonely, and in the same bed. Let’s just thank goodness that we stopped at the kisses,” Maria said. But inside, she knew that she liked the kiss. She was actually hoping that it did mean something. But she didn’t want to screw her friendship with Melinda. And that made everything weirder for Maria.

  Melinda climbed out of the bed, yawning. Her clothes were messy, as they usually were after being slept in.

  “Do you want to go for breakfast? There’s a diner nearby, and it looks nice,” Melinda asked.

  Maria smiles. “Sounds great. Just let me get ready, and we can leave.”

  Within minutes, they were walking out of the motel’s main door, looking much better than they had the day before. Maria had changed the bandages on her right leg again. It wasn’t bleeding as much, although they still stung. Melinda’s ankle didn’t hurt as much, but she insisted that she was going to walk it off. From the dust-covered, dark suit-wearing pair they had entered as yesterday, they looked almost like different people.

  They got into the small diner around eight in the morning. People getting ready for work were just finishing their coffee and muffins, paying and leaving in a hurry. Melinda and Maria took their time to eat breakfast, chatting as they did, like any pair of friends would. So for those thirty-five minutes where they sat in the booth and talked, they forgot completely about their moment the previous night.

  They had not received any other signal from HQ since the day before that. Although they looked out for en extraction team or any sign of contact back at SHIELD, they always came to the same conclusion – nothing. They tried to make the most of their day. They found a spot with good signal back to HQ, but no other directions had been given. They were alone on this one.

  Still, there was never much to do for the two. They went to bookstores, sat around the motel and hung out in the common room for a while, had coffee at this strange-looking place and had a conversation with a foreign man (who spoke in broken English) about movies from the 1950s. It was an eventful day in their lives of waiting in a small town for the team to get them.

  So when they finally returned to their room after dinner, when the sun sank down into the sky, they were quite surprised to find that it was only seven twenty in the evening. They sat in the room for a while, arguing about what they should do next until nightfall or HQ called. In the end they decided on having breakfast at night. The diner was open until twelve – they checked – and if they could, they were going to order exactly what they had at breakfast.

  It was fun. The waiters and waitresses had changed shifts, so no one there recognized them. They talked again, once more forgetting about any tense things between themselves. It was almost as if they were on vacation.

  Maria constantly reminded herself that they were just waiting for HQ, or for the extraction team. They weren’t there for fun and games. But Melinda felt otherwise.

  “We can have that fun and games while waiting for the team,” she said. “The night’s still so young. What do you say we try to feel twenty again?”

   Maria smiled. “Sounds great, but I really don’t think we should do anything out of line.”

  “What are you?” Melinda asked. “A dinosaur? We never get off work, I want to live tonight!”

  “We don’t need to live in the whole party and drinking and doing people you’ve just met in a cheap motel way.”

  “Then how do we live?”

  Maria shrugged. “However we’d like to.”

  “Then, I’d like to live by partying, drinking, and doing people I’ve just met in a cheap motel,” Melinda said, grinning. Maria smirked back at her. The idea did sound tempting. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d let herself loose.

  “We’ll find a bar easily. Let’s go!” Melinda said, taking Maria by her hand and pulling her out of the booth.

  “Alright, but if we suddenly need to report to HQ and we’re both drunk and giggling, it’s your problem.”

 

~

 

By some way or another, Maria was able to stay sober by not drinking too much alcohol. Melinda called her a nerd for that, but she was still concerned about the whole “HQ calling in to find two drunken agents” thing. Melinda, on the other hand had drunk way more than Maria, but just had a high alcohol tolerance and was quite alright.

  “I’m perfectly fine, mom. I’m not drunk,” she told Maria once again.

  “That’s what they always say,” Maria replied. They were walking in the cold October air back to the motel. Melinda was heated up. Quite literally. Alcohol and fire-types didn’t mix all that well.

  Maria placed an arm around Melinda’s back and they walked back to the motel in silence. As they entered the building and headed towards the lift, Melinda finally spoke.

  “We haven’t fully lived yet, you know,” Melinda said. “There’s something missing.”

  “A few fireballs, a walking snowman, a broken window and five terrified civilians?” Maria asked.

  “No, not that one. The other thing you said, before we even got to the bar.”

  “I can’t remember what I said.”

  “You said that we didn’t need to live by partying and drinking and doing people we’ve just met in a cheap motel. We’ve got the first two points down,” Melinda said.

  Maria looked at her. “Melinda, you’re not going to find a stranger and bring him back to the room, right?”

  “Not at all,” Melinda replied. “I’m talking about me and you - more specifically, that overprotective parent side of you, and that party animal side of me. Maria, that side of us is new, strange.”

  “You’re more drunk than you think.”

  “We’ve walked our entire way back here and I did not step out of a straight line more than twice. Come on, just once. We’ll never need to acknowledge it ever again.”

  Maria had to admit that it sounded tempting. With that kiss the last night and so many unresolved things between them, having sex in a motel with Melinda and never speaking of it ever sounded great. She wasn’t going to deny that she’s never thought of it, either.

  They entered the lift and were on their way to the fourth floor.

  “Just once?” Melinda asked again, her voice softer this time.

  “Just once.”

  They made out in the lift. Somehow, Maria felt that they weren’t the first one to do that. They stopped when the bell sounded and the door opened. To anyone standing outside, it looked as if nothing had happened in there. They stood normally, side by side, eyes rested on the number above the door. Then Melinda grabbed Maria by her arm and pulled her into their room.

  They were not gentle. Maria found herself pressed against the wall (which she, honestly, liked). Her fingers dug into Melinda’s arms. Melinda took Maria’s shirt off.

  And so there, on that night, the two made love to one another.

  In the morning, when both of them were in bed, awake and facing each other, they decided to talk about the previous night. It was just that once where they’d break the rule, but it had to be done.

  “We promised never to speak of last night, right?” Maria asked.

  “Yeah,” Melinda replied.

  “Great. Because I would have no idea what to do if anyone found out.”

  Melinda sat up. “I wasn’t too rough or anything last night, was I?”

  Maria smiled. “To make an ice-type hot and bothered is one thing, and to make them sweat is a whole other.” Maria had to say, Melinda was good. But all she did was grin a little wider and get off the bed.

  “I should probably go take a shower. Are we going for breakfast later?” Melinda asked, walking towards the bathroom.

  “Sounds great,” Maria replied. And that concluded their conversation. There was always that air of unspoken tenseness around them when they thought about that night. They didn’t quite regret it, no, but something within both Melinda and Maria told them that never speaking of it again wasn’t the right move. But promises were promises. The only other time it was brought up was during a game of Truth or Dare with three other agents. Everyone was drunk, though, and the only person in the group that clearly remembered what Melinda said was Maria herself.

  That day, in the late morning, they got a signal from HQ telling them to get ready in twenty minutes. A helicopter was being sent to their location.

* * *

Melinda ran towards the SHIELD building. She’d taken one of the last few buses back, and she was urgent to get her best friend and (once) lover. As she neared the familiar grey building, she slowed down into a fast walk. She bit her lip and looked up at the office in front of her.

  She didn’t stop to take out her SHIELD badge, scan it by the side of the door and wait for it to slide open and enter. She’d taken it out in advance, and she did everything swiftly. She didn’t wait for the doors to open fully before she walked through them. Melinda made her way through semi-darkened corridors and doorways, feeling a mix of panic from both the urgency of finding Maria and feeling like she was back in that building in Bahrain.

  She walked straight past the lift. It was too slow. She could run up the stairs to the fifth floor fasted than the lift would take to go down to her, and back up to the fifth floor. She pushed the door open to the stairwell and sprinted her way up. She held her bag with one hand, not wanting it to slow her down.

  Melinda wasn’t tired the slightest bit by the time she exited the stairwell on the fifth floor. Though she didn’t know why, a voice inside her head kept pushing her forward, telling her that it was necessary that she joined them on the mission to find Maria. As much as Melinda dreaded fieldwork now, she listened to it.

  Arriving at mission HQ, she flung the door open and stepped inside looking like she hadn’t just ran her way there.

  “Great to see that you didn’t change your mind,” Coulson said. “You’ll be a valuable addition to the search party.”

  “Thanks. But I still don’t see how you were able to let me in the team within those two seconds.”

  “We originally hoped you could come. After all, our plan could involve one more person, and you know Maria best.”

  Melinda shook her head. “This doesn’t seem like ‘who knows Maria’. It’s more like ‘who knows where Maria was taken to’.”

  Coulson directed her into one of the rooms to be briefed by the other teammates. And as she walked towards it, she looked behind at Coulson.

  “Don’t let me back out of this,” she said, and with that, she entered the room.

 

~

 

A few hours later, they were preparing to get off the jet plane to head towards the mission area. Melinda had spent the entire plane ride wondering what the other agents were wondering. They were in a mix of respect and fear when Coulson said that Melinda would be joining them for the mission.

  She heard them whispering as they boarded the plane.

  “He wasn’t lying! The Cavalry is following us.”

  “I didn’t know that she was going back into the field.”

  “This is the first time I’ve seen her in person. She’s surely a lot shorter than I imagined.”

  Melinda ignored them. That was the easiest thing to do, after all. In the plane, while she looked out of the window at the dim clouds in the night sky going past them, she could feel her teammates’ stares burning into her. At some point in time, Melinda wondered if the mission would be different without her fire to help out. She could fight with her fists, yes, but she preferred her flames.

  If she remembered correctly, only two out of five of her team members had powers – the first, a middle-aged man who had been on a mission with Melinda before, and the second was a woman in level four whom Melinda had never seen before. The man was a telepathic-powered one. His power wasn’t good for a majority of missions, but he was good with a gun and had an eye for detail. The girl, however, was a shadow-type.

  That was one of Melinda’s favourite power types to watch. Already in the plane she was able to pick out their common traits. The girl didn’t speak. She smiled politely at Melinda and listened in on her fellow agents’ conversations. She kept looking around and enjoyed sitting in brighter corners.

  Shadow-types were able to manipulate light. They weren’t the kind that could project light from their hands or create strong lasers, no. Shadow types were the exact opposite. Melinda enjoyed watching them take the light out of rooms, so that it became a pitch black. They could remove all the light in a room so that only one little glint of light remained. They could turn their entire body a night black and stalk you as your shadow. Some of the more powerful ones were able to create the illusion that the whole sky had gone missing.

  And as much as Melinda hated the dark now, having the dark as an ally was not a bad idea.

  At some point in time where they were on the plane, the man with telepathy asked her a question. Not out loud, but in her mind.

  “Are you still able to create fire from your hands?” He asked, staring at her.

  Melinda shook her head. She knew that she could reply telepathically as long as he was still in her mind, but that was too troublesome. Every time a telepathy-type entered and left her mind, she got a searing pain through her head when she replied.

  The man nodded, not asking anything else. He continued talking and gossiping with his teammates. Once again, Melinda heard little bits of their conversation, which seemed to be mainly about her. They didn’t refer to her as ‘Melinda’ or ‘May’ or ‘Agent May’, of course. They always only called her ‘The Cavalry’. She hated it.

  The name brought back the feeling of being in Bahrain. So she always told people not to call her the Cavalry, but they never listened. As much as she wanted to tell them to call her anything but that, she didn’t want to admit that she had been eavesdropping.

  “She’s here mainly for Maria.”

  “You really haven’t seen them together? I mean, they’re SHIELD’s it-couple!”

  Melinda hid her smile. It had been years since she and Maria began being such close friends, and yet the rumors kept on spreading. Yes, they were lovers – but that was just once, and they’d stopped.

  Still, Melinda remembered all the gossip from the agents. She’d learnt to go with it, and that denying things made everything a hundred times worse. And the agents’ reactions were her favourite thing ever. She didn’t need to say that she missed it, because it never stopped in the first place.

* * *

_Maria and Melinda enjoyed going out together after work, especially on days that ended late. Then the only places left open were those cheap, run-down diners, 24 hour convenience stores, or bars. And those places were where they usually had most of their fun._

  It wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone when they were spotted together. It was considered normal, even. But what was surprising was when the two of them weren’t together without an actual reason, as that hardly happened. To an unknowing eye, they looked like they were in one of those high-school relationships where the boyfriend and girlfriend (but in their case, girlfriend and girlfriend) just couldn’t leave each other’s company for five seconds.

  To a knowing eye, however, they were two middle-aged women who had this awkward, unspoken romantic air around them, so Victoria Hand said.

  One Friday night, they ended at eleven forty. Being a Friday night, they didn’t want to go to the clubs. Melinda was already thirty-nine years old, with Maria being eight years her junior. The clubs would be crowded with drunken twenty three year-olds. So instead, they went to the usual diner, as they always would. The night-shift waitress would call them by name, and ask if it was the regular.

  That night, sitting at their usual table by the scratched-up glass window, they were approached with a commonly asked question, this time from their waitress Rene.

  “I hope I don’t come off too nosy, but can I ask something?” She asked the two.

  “Sure,” Maria replied.

  “Are you two just friends, or…” Rene began.

  Melinda smiled. “We get this question every other day. We’re just good friends.”

  And that was how the topic for the rest of the day began. Once Rene spoke a bit more and had to run off to serve someone else, Melinda and Maria began talking about just how much they’ve been asked things like ‘are you two dating?’ and ‘you’re gay?’.

  They ended up listing everything down.

  “How do we remember all of these anyway?” Maria asked, scribbling ‘is this your wife, Melinda?’ (asked by Melinda’s mother) down.

  “Most of these have been asked more than once. There’s probably some we’ve forgotten,” Melinda said. “Add in ‘I support your relationship’.”

  Maria laughed. “That was from my neighbour, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. The old one,” Melinda replied, smiling.

  “He’s still asking me when I’m getting married to ‘that Asian girl you brought over last time’,” Maria said.

  Melinda sighed, leaning against her right hand. “People really are getting the wrong idea about us.”

  “It’s not like we’re screaming out that we’re just friends,” Maria said. “I mean, we know each other better than the SHIELD files do, we’ve been friends for at least three years, we talk to each other about everything and anything, and the fact that right now, we’re sitting in the seats usually meant for couples, is really saying something else.”

  “We need to stop being around each other so much,” Melinda said. There was a short silence between that sentence and the sudden burst of laughter from both of them.

  “As if,” Melinda continued. “How about, from now on, we go along with anything anyone says about us.”

  “Unless it’s going to be recorded officially,” Maria added. “But go on, I like where you’re headed.”

  “So if an agent asks if we’re dating, we say yes and add in unnecessary details about our private life,” Melinda said.

  “If Victoria decides to make a joke about how we’re eventually going to merge into one, we tell her that we’re working on it.”

  For the rest of the night, until the clock hit one in the morning and they had to leave, they talked and talked about how easily they could mess with everyone they knew. As they walked home, the moon was covered by greying clouds and thunder rumbled in the distance. It was drizzling by the time they’d walked two blocks away from the diner.

  Maria only got her umbrella out when the rain was too heavy for them to continue strolling in. Soon, the path ahead was blurred by the rain, and the streets were empty apart from the two of them under a striped, red and orange umbrella.

  Maria put her arm around the shorter woman’s waist and pulled her closer.

  “Are you getting in the rain?” Maria asked.

  “Just on the right side,” Melinda replied.

  “Good, because I’m getting soaked on the left,” Maria said, grinning. Her grip around Melinda’s waist loosened, and the rested her head on the shorter woman’s shoulder.

  Anyone could tell you that two people with even the slightest hint of a romantic spark were something you shouldn’t put in the rain. That resulted, usually, in a love story cliché. And that night on their way home, neither Melinda nor Maria could deny that they had crossed the ‘platonic relationship’ point, even if it had occurred three times before and every single time it was temporary.

  With the left side of her under the (somehow) soothing downpour, Maria wondered if there was ever going to be a chance of the line being crossed again, and perhaps, the next time permanently.


	5. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fires are put out, and ice melts.
> 
> That's a constant in nature.

 

 _Going home made everything feel worse. After Bahrain, Melinda could feel the darkness from every inch of wherever she was in seep into her. To have unknown rooms and unfamiliar homes feel like a threat to you was normal._ But seeing your old friends and the same hallways you’ve been seeing your whole life and to make a demon out of it was the last thing Melinda wanted.

  It’s only eight at night when the team in Bahrain returns, all exhausted and disturbed beyond measure. Already back at the base, rumors about Melinda had begun spreading. She didn’t know how it got around so fast, but with everyone in SHIELD being in contact with almost every other department, it was no surprise that word spread quickly.

   During the debrief session, Coulson kindly referred to Melinda’s burning of a living human as “a little over the top” instead of Melinda’s expected “inhumane and revolting”. She found herself paying little attention throughout the whole session, and instead concentrated way more on her thoughts. Ever since she woke up in the plane, her hands and neck were almost ice-cold, or so she felt. She felt as if her soul had been tossed out the fourth floor window, and it was so heavy it fell and sank through the first layer of the earth.

  She knew she was being dramatic. But Melinda wasn’t able to shake the feeling off her. Soon, they were dismissed for the night. Mindlessly, Melinda grabbed her things and walked off. But she didn’t go home. The last thing she wanted was for her own house to become her favourite spot for her nightmares. Instead, she headed to the roof of the building, hoping that the open air of the darkening night would help.

  It did, a little.

  It was dark all around naturally. She felt at ease. Melinda still craved for the light – the natural kind. She missed the warmth of the sun, the light of a large campfire, light streaming through the leaves of a tree. That point in time was where Melinda created a dangerously large flame on her palm.

  Then, Melinda looked down, and felt the last remaining bit of soul leave her.

  Her spark, her light, her skill and talent had abandoned her. She tried again – no fire. Not even a thick, choking smoke. Not even a flicker from her fingertips. She was filled up with panic and fear.

  What’s happening, she thought. Even the voice in her head was weak and feeble. It hasn’t left me this isn’t real this is a nightmare I’ll wake up back in my bed this is not real it hasn’t left me this is not real it hasn’t left me…

  The voice was now screeching. Melinda felt herself choke back on her tears. This time, she let herself cry. She didn’t hold back. Melinda wasn’t sure how loud she was, or how long she sat there curled up against a wall on the roof.

  All she knew was that she only stopped crying when the night air turned cold, and there was a gentle hand on her back and soft voice trying to calm her down.

  “Melinda, Melinda,” Maria whispered as she kneeled down beside her. “Is everything alright?”

  Melinda tried to stop her tears, but she wasn’t able to speak. She wiped away her tear stains, though they still kept coming. She finally gathered the will to talk. She didn’t say much, but it was a start.

  “Maria,” she said weakly, her voice freezing at her throat. She sat up, feeling worse than ever. Seeing Maria look at her with that amount of worry didn’t make Melinda feel much better. Maria paused for a moment, and then pulled Melinda into a hug. There, she was quite sure that Maria, too, was sobbing. She hadn’t been able to see it clearly before as the tears had blurred out Melinda’s vision.

  “Maria, what am I going to do?”

  Maria hushed her as she buried her face into Maria’s shoulder. She didn’t know what Melinda was talking about, though she did hear that whatever happened in Bahrain was scarring to everyone involved in and witnessing the events. It was only after Coulson said that Melinda was badly affected did Maria decide to look for her on the roof, only to find her pressed against a wall crying to herself.

  “It’s alright, we’ll find a way past it,” Maria said. Melinda found herself being comforted by these words. Having someone else with her in her situation made things so much better.

_Melinda admitted to being terrified. She told Maria everything – from how she came across the civilian girl Amira right down to how she felt like her shadows had turned on her. She told her about how her flames didn’t work anymore. And up until now, Maria Christina Hill was the only person Melinda fully revealed the details of Bahrain to._

 

* * *

 

“Agent May.”

  Melinda’s thoughts were cut off as she heard her name being called.

  “May, your hand is… umm... smoking,” Coulson said, sounding concerned.

  Melinda sighed, and tried to get it to stop. Thankfully, it was easier than before. The smoke ceased to form after the waved it off and forced it to stop.

  They, along with their other team members, were sitting in a SHIELD van on their way to the building Maria went missing in. They drove along a road with a ground so uneven that every ten seconds, they’d hit a bump and everyone inside would be flung out of their seats. As much as they disliked it, the route was secure and they wouldn’t be easily spotted by enemies, so they put up with it. After all, it was only a ten-minute drive.

  “I thought you couldn’t use your fire anymore?” One of the agents asked.

  “I can’t,” Melinda replied. “But the smoke just began recently.”

  “It’s emotion driven,” the man with the telepathy-type powers said. “Naturally, the powers should still be with you, they just can’t be activated on a regular note. Emotions like extreme happiness, fear, anxiety and anger can trigger it again.”

  There was a moment of silent at first. Melinda had been feeling these emotions, except for anger, lately. Fear and anxiety about what happened to Maria. Small bursts of happiness and nostalgia at the various memories of Maria.

  Their friends honestly weren’t wrong when they teased her about how much she was affected by Maria. She knew it, too, but she didn’t realize that it was to the extent where her powers were slowly coming back to her because of Maria.

  Once again, Melinda’s thoughts were cut off.

  “The building is in sight,” The driver said, turning the van to the left sharply.

  That put an air of seriousness around them, and the topic of Melinda and her powers were pushed aside.

  “Once we stop, move out of the car and get into your pairs. Move according to the plan,” Coulson ordered.

  “You didn’t tell me anything about pairs or plans,” Melinda whispered.

  “You’ll be with me.”

  “And?”

  “We won’t need a plan,” Coulson said.

  Then, the van came to a sudden stop. The tires squealed, and in the next few seconds, the doors were thrown open and the agents climbed out. They got into position and made their way towards the building. Melinda felt her chest tighten as she re-lived the standard procedure of most missions. As always, there were guards stationed outside that were taken out quickly by Melinda’s teammates.

  The group moved inwards. Soon, they had all spread out, everyone taking their own position. Then they were only left with Melinda and Coulson standing in the dimmed hallway of the building.

  “So where do we go?” May asked.

  “Why don’t you decide?” Coulson replied.

  “Are we really diving into this without a plan?”

  “Actually,” Coulson said, turning to Melinda. “I do have a plan. And’s that’s to let your intuition take the lead.”

  Melinda groaned. “If anything bad happens to us, it’s your fault.”

  Then she began walking. To where, she didn’t know. Perhaps for once she could go on without a set path. So she walked as she wished, Coulson trailing behind her. But even after they walked for fifteen minutes, it felt like they were going nowhere. The walls were identical to one another and nothing interesting marked the halls. It felt as if they’d just been in circles – no other team members in sight, no enemy agents running towards them.

  Melinda was about to tell Coulson that it was his turn to take lead when they stumbled upon something interesting - a faded door labelled “Stairwell C” with a heavy padlock locking the door shut. The area around the door was much dimmer than everywhere else. Melinda laid her hand on the door, having a strong feeling about what was down the stairwell.

  “I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” she said, tapping on the door. She inspected the padlock. There honestly wasn’t a need for one if it was only guarding stairs. It was definitely shady.

  “That means we’re on the right track,” Coulson replied. “Now move aside, let’s open the lock.”

  It didn’t take long for Coulson to unpick the lock. They pushed the door open with ease. Then, in the next moment, they found themselves facing the ends of two rifles, pointed by heavily armored guards.

  “You’re right. You’re not supposed to be here,” the first one said, ready to fire. May and Coulson were able to duck right at the moment the trigger was pulled. A bullet was shot in the wall, and the concrete around it crumbled and fell. The two guards were taken by surprise as they were grabbed and taken down quickly.

  Melinda only realized that she took down one of the guards in three moves when she spotted Coulson staring at her.

  “You still have it in you,” he said, hardly surprised.

  “Let’s go. I have a bad feeling about these stairs,” Melinda said, ignoring his previous comment. She moved on, turning right and walking down the stairs. Coulson followed after her.

  “What’s downstairs?”

  “No idea,” Melinda replied, not slowing down.

  On their way down, they encountered several more guards, all which were hostile towards them. Wherever they were headed must have been important. They walked down at least two more flights of stairs before they encountered another locked door labelled “Basement”. Once again, the lock was picked, and they went through. They expected more guards to be on the other side of the door. But when they pushed it open, the only thing they saw was a hallway leading straight ahead to an old door.

  They looked around. At first, it seemed like it was only that path, with every other door they passed being locked. But as they walked down it in silence, Melinda passed a door that felt much colder than everywhere else in the room. She stopped abruptly, and Coulson stopped with her.

  “Are you feeling that too?” Melinda asked. “The sudden coldness?”

  “Yes. Could it be Maria?” He said.

  “Describe the cold,” Melinda said. She noticed the look of confusion on Coulson’s face. She repeated, “Describe how the cold feels.”

  Coulson paused for a moment, thinking of how to phrase it.

  “It’s as if the cold is trying to pierce through your skin,” he said; ready to unlock that door as well.

  “There’s definitely an ice-type in there,” Melinda said. “And whoever they may be, they’re in distress.”

  The door was unlocked, and the two entered. They were hit with a sudden gust of cold, frigid air, and another dark room appeared before their eyes. But they hardly noticed any of that. Instead, their eyes focused on an almost identical door across the room.

  It was covered in a thick layer of crystalline ice. Around it, the walls were frozen over, snowflakes and ice shards littering the floors. Ice spikes poked out through the door. Melinda knew that that had to be Maria behind the door.

  And so, she and Coulson walked towards yet another door, but this time, the door that would conclude the mission.

 

 

 


	6. Spilling Red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, sorry for not updating in quite a while! I've been a little busier lately and neglected this a little...  
> Anyway, we're close to the end now, and the eighth chapter is more of an epilogue, really. Nevertheless, thank you to those of you who have read this, favourited, commented, and have just stuck with me! I appreciate it, truly.

The door doesn’t want to open. It was frozen shut, the space between the wall and the door in such a thick layer of ice that the door hardly budged. Melinda kept pushing it anyway. The ice would have to give in eventually. Coulson helped her push as well, and yet, the door remained where it had been all along.

  Coulson sighed, moving away.

  “Is there any other way in?” He asked.

  “Not that I know of. The maps of the building didn’t even mention a basement,” Melinda replied, leaning against the door. Then, Coulson noticed something.

  Where Melinda’s palms were placed was two dents in the ice. Droplets of water trailed down.

  “Melinda, you’re melting the ice.”

  “What?” She said, surprised. She turned around, and where her body was pressed against the icy surface was a barely visible sunken-in shape.

   She studied the door. “If it takes that short a time to melt some of the ice…”

   She grabbed the hinges of the door firmly. She felt the ice beneath her hands slowly melt and drip onto the floor as water droplets. Then, Melinda placed her hands on the ice between the door and wall. It melted away, and soon, she had to use her fingertips to get to the ice.

  “It should be good enough,” she said, flicking the water off her hands. “On a count of three we run into the door and get it open.”

  Coulson nodded and braced himself.

  “One! Two! Three!”

  And with that, the two flung themselves against the semi-defrosted door. There was a loud shattering sound. The force was strong enough, and the door swung inwards, ice shards cracking and being sent in every direction. Melinda stumbled through the open doors, Coulson following behind her.

  There, by the side of the frost-covered room, Maria Hill sprawled across the ground, the back of her head pressed against the wall. Around her were large ice spikes, raised as if to protect her. She was unconscious. Melinda’s chest tightened and she felt like it was impossible to breathe. She ran towards Maria, holding her breath.

  She was just about to lift up Maria’s hand to check her pulse when she noticed something – she was bleeding. Blood stained her stomach and dark blue SHIELD uniform. She was exceptionally pale. Though she was afraid to see the truth, she checked for Maria’s pulse anyway.

  At first she couldn’t feel Maria’s heart beating, and Melinda’s heart raced faster in fear. But then she detected a slow, weak pulse, and felt more relaxed. She finally took a breath.

  “She’s still alive,” Melinda said to Coulson, whom she nearly forgot was still in the room.

  He nodded, looking relieved. Coulson walked closer, getting a closer look at Maria. She seemed to be getting paler by the moment.

  “I’ll call for the rest of the team and tell them that we’ve found her,” he said, activating his earpiece. He stepped to a side of the room, waiting for signal from the other ends.

  Meanwhile, Melinda kneeled down beside Maria’s limp body. She tucked a lock of Maria’s hair behind her ear gingerly. Inside, Melinda still felt scared. Although she knew that Maria was alive, she didn’t know for how long more. She was losing blood at an alarming rate. Anything Melinda did now was limited and of hardly much help. Still, the team was coming with help, and that made her feel a bit more at ease.

  Melinda continued to try stopping the bleeding. She was certain that Maria had been shot – the bullet was lodged around her stomach area. It was covered in blood, and so Melinda couldn’t see it clearly, but she could tell that it wasn’t an ordinary bullet. Her hands were now stained with blood, and the room had the distinct, metallic smell of blood. It made her feel sick, especially since it was Maria’s blood her hands were covered in, and it spared no expense at reminding her how the life was slowly draining from Maria.

  “The team’s got the message. They’re coming down now, hold on a little longer,” Coulson said. “How’s Maria?”

  “Bad,” Melinda replied. “She won’t stop bleeding.”

  He got down beside Melinda to help her. They tried to keep Maria alive, until they heard footsteps.

  “I think the team’s here,” Coulson said, footsteps getting louder.

  Then, a man appeared through the doorway.

  “Your team? Hardly,” the man said, laughing. He walked forward, shoving Coulson out of the way. He took a look at Melinda, bent over Maria and pressing against her wound.

  “I see you’ve found the guinea pig,” he said, smiling down at Melinda.

  “Guinea pig? Who are you, anyway?” Coulson asked.

  “Of course, you have questions. I’m Bevan Alvarez. Well, just call me Bev – everyone does it. I’m working on a brilliant project now, and that’s to be able to transfer the powers of any type to someone with no power at all,” Bev said. “There’s no point in keeping a secret now. After all, the first stage has been done already, on your darling Maria right here. Going back now is already near-impossible.”

  Melinda turned pale. Having lost her flames before, she could imagine how Maria would feel if she woke up to learn that the ice within her had all melted and left. She felt the burn of a rage start inside her stomach.

  “Why her?” Melinda asked, angry.

  “Who’d be more suiting to de-power than one of the SHIELD agents that knocked out my agents that day?” Bev said, grinning even wider. Then, he gestured around the ice-covered room. “And I seem to have drawn out a particularly powerful one. Don’t you just hate it when the one with no powers are always discriminated because they don’t have laser eyes, or arms that can rip a car in half? Me too.”

  “That doesn’t mean you can just remove someone’s powers for yourself,” Coulson said.

  “I think it does,” Bev said, frowning.

  He got down next to Melinda. “You’re the one that stood out of the fight, aren’t you? Well, step aside now; I have a job to do.”

  Melinda and Coulson watched as he drew a long, metal pole from his coat pocket. The end was sharpened, and if you looked closely, there was a needle on the end as well. He raised it up, almost as if to stab Maria with it. Frantic, Melinda pushed Bev’s hand away, and he let the pole go in surprise. It hit the floor with a sharp, ringing sound, and Melinda stood up, looming over Bev. Coulson walked over and joined her.

  “What was that for?”

  “I’m not going to watch you take Maria’s powers for yourself,” Melinda replied, glaring at Bev. He sheepishly stood up to retrieve the pole.

  “You’re not going to step out this time?” He asked, getting nervous. Suddenly, he felt the air around him thin and the air from his lungs seep out his throat. He looked to Coulson, who had his hand out, manipulating the air around them.

  Taking him by surprise, Melinda hit him across the face, leaving a large red mark on his cheek. He coughed. Melinda’s stare was so intense it could instantly melt all the ice in the room. She clenched her fists, and her veins glowed amber. Smoke blew out through the spaces between her fingers.

  She looked Bev in the eyes. Stepping forward, she spoke.

  “No chance.”

 

* * *

 

_Though it was small and rather rigid, the ice dragon sped through the air, eventually disappearing through a series of vibrant blue sparks head-first._

  “It’s difficult to make ice bend, and the snow one isn’t as pretty,” Maria said, forming yet another small ice dragon. “How do you even make one out of fire?”

  “Make sure that the sides of the flames don’t flare out too much and make the dragon look like a spiky worm,” Melinda said. “I’d go on but I’m sure you don’t want to hear more about the properties of fire.”

  Maria smiled. With a wave of her hand, her current ice dragon vanished again, and she formed one out of snow. It glistened in the faint sunlight, with little snowflakes and scales on the back of the dragon. She tensed her hands, and the snow pressed together. She squinted, and extra details were carved into the dragon’s body.

  Then, a small scale fell of the dragon. Then another two. Then, it crumbled off, falling out of mid-air and scattering across Maria’s lap and the chairs.

  She sighed, frustrated. “The snow is too soft, and the ice is too hard.”

  “Come on,” Melinda said, moving in closer to Maria. “Form the ice one again, but loosen up this time.”

  Maria took a deep breath, and formed the ice dragon with her hands now stable and relaxed. The usual shape of the dragon was there – head, body, tail and main spikes. Her hands closed slightly, and the patterns and scales of the dragon formed. The details were etched into the ice, and although they were not too intricate, they looked lovely. She kept the dragon hovering in the air.

  “Alright, now try to relax again,” Melinda said.

  Maria nodded, and she let herself unwind. The dragon rose up, and its body began moving. It wavered, still a little less flexible than Maria would’ve liked, but it was a start.

  “Try to let it fly around,” Melinda said.

  Maria’s just needed to flick her wrist, and the dragon followed. She spun her wrist in a circle slowly so that her dragon could catch up. Then, the ice dragon swooped down, its side bending much more smoothly as it made the turn.

  “Take a deep breath,” Melinda instructed. Maria did as she said. Then, Melinda held Maria’s wrist, her grasp gentle yet firm.  Her hand moved up to Maria’s fingers, and pushed them down softly. Her hand lingered there.

  “Let yourself ease up,” she said quietly. Then, Melinda pulled her hand away. Once again, Maria tried to relax, and she held her hand in the position Melinda left it.

  She twisted her wrist again, and the dragon made its loop. This time, however, it was much smoother. The ice dragon no longer had a sharp bend in its turn, but instead made a nice curve. Though it looked near perfect, Melinda knew that it could still get better.

  “Do you want to stop?” She asked Maria.

  “No. Let’s keep going with this,” Maria replied, making the dragon go another round.

_So, that day, Melinda helped Maria in the art of elemental dragons. Maria felt like they’d taken near forever simply to get it to turn nicely. She still had the design to work on. Yet, as the sky darkened and soon Melinda’s fire dragon was the brightest thing in the room, they worked on Maria’s little ice dragon._

 

* * *

 

Over and over again, Bev tried to reach for his metal pole (or a machine, he called it) and to impale Maria with it. Over and over again, he was stopped by Melinda and Coulson. The air around them returned eventually, and he was able to breathe again. But he was weak and breathless, which left him at a big disadvantage.

  “There!” He said, taking in yet another large breath. “Does having magical powers give you the right to make me suffocate?”

  “No. I’m doing this for Maria,” Coulson replied.

  “She attacked my men! She froze them – their legs, their veins, their entire body,” Bev said.

  “They attacked us first,” Coulson said, stepping forward, ready to fight again.

  “We wanted SHIELD agents for test subjects. For ages they’d been cruel to those with no powers,” Bev said, voice getting louder. “What Maria did was cruel. If she even had a heart, she would have frozen it as well! That heartless woman, that bitch-”

  His speech was cut off by a blow to the face by Melinda.

  “She’s anything but that.”

Bev fell to the ground, partly from the punch, and another part from slipping on the ice. Melinda stood over him, her insides feeling like they’d been set ablaze. She had never felt so powerful, towering over someone else, their very life to be played in her hands. Bev stared back up, panic showing clearly on his face. He looked to the side, searching for the pole.

  Melinda was angry. So angry that she didn’t notice him slipping the pole behind his back, or the footsteps of the rest of her team approaching the door.

  “Hey – let’s make a deal. You keep me alive and safe and I’ll return Maria untouched. Maybe swap for someone else we both don’t like?” Bev asked, voice trembling and stuttering.

   “And leave her in the first phase of your twisted experiment, bleeding to her death?” Melinda asked, her eyebrows furrowing. “And for you to take the powers of someone else? Look, I’ve lost my powers before, to personal causes, and it’s the worst thing that could happen to me. I’m not letting anyone else go through that.”

  There was a period of tense silence. Phil heard the footsteps in the back, though Melinda still focused on her rage. She wanted to get her anger out soon, but not before she found out if they could reverse the first phase on Maria. But she wasn’t too used to having spoken so much at once. The faster she did it, the quicker she could get rid of Bev. And although Melinda was oblivious to the sights and sounds around her, there was something she still heard.

   “Melinda.”

  She forgot about her anger momentarily, and a sense of excitement and relief flooded through her. It was a little louder than a whisper, but the empty room amplified it.

  “Maria?”

  “Melinda, where are we?” Maria asked, her voice louder, but still as weak as before.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Melinda whispered. She leaned in closer to Maria, and held a loose lock of Maria’s hair in her hand.

  Melinda forgot about everything else. Right now, nothing else was as important. Bev got off the ground, and Phil took his eyes off the door. They stood watching the two. Melinda kneeled down next to Maria. Maria’s eyelids lowered over her eyes, and she raised a hand to cup Melinda’s cheek.

  “Were you ever this pretty?” Maria asked, her voice so soft that only Melinda could hear it. After all, that was all she heard.

  Melinda smiled. Maria was clearly light-headed and tired. Yet, she summoned enough strength to raise her body up, and to kiss Melinda. She was taken by surprise. Her insides were on fire yet again, but for a completely different reason. She closed her eyes and kissed Maria back.

  She never knew how much she wanted this.

  Reluctantly, Melinda pulled away. Her entire body was filled with elation, and her lips felt like they were enchanted. She looked at Maria, who looked back at her with dreamy eyes. Although she was still dazed at what exactly was happening, she smiled happily at Melinda.

  The expression didn’t last long.

  In Melinda’s distraction and sudden bout of positive emotions, she forgot to pay attention to anything else – and that included Bev sneaking up to them. Only then did she notice the shadow cast above them, and turned her head to find Bev standing beside them, the metal needle-pole in hand. Maria didn’t quite seem to see him, and had gone on to close her eyes and was about to lie back down satisfied. Melinda knew what he was going to do. But her hand only reached out when the needle was lowered too far down. She was too slow.

  Maria was stabbed with the sharpened needle end of the pole around her heart area. She jerked up. Her eyes widened. Her breath stopped. The last pinch of colour drew from her face. The metal pole gradually turned to a shade of pale aquamarine blue, and once the last trace of silver had left it, Bev pulled it out. The sharpened end dripped with blood, and once again, Maria fell, bleeding heavily.

 Maria’s head and back hit the icy wall uncomfortably. Her eyes were shut tight. All Melinda could do was watch. She pressed a hand against Maria’s wound, trying to make the blood stop flowing.

  “It’s stinging,” Maria managed to mumble, shifting weakly.

  “You’ll get better, I promise,” Melinda replied.

  Maria didn’t hear what she said. Melinda checked her wrist for a pulse, only to find it slower than before. Feeling it on her fingers, she turned behind and nodded to Coulson, who she kept forgetting was still in the room.

   Then, Melinda felt the room suddenly turn warmer. She was quite certain that it was due to Maria having just lost her ice powers to whatever hell of a tool Bev impaled her with. She stood up, glancing back to Maria, who was now unconscious again.

  Just when Bev smiled slyly at Coulson and Melinda and was about to speak, their team charged through the door. The first few who entered had rifles and guns trained on Bev, who stood there, not expecting anyone to come in. Melinda was relieved to see backup arrive.

  “Sir, drop the weapon and stand down. We will not hesitate to shoot you,” the first team member said.

  “Well, this isn’t a weapon,” he said, sounding proud of his little loophole. “But you are welcome to stay and watch. Tonight, I will change all of modern power technology!”

  Melinda rolled her eyes at him. She already had plans to make him fail miserably. She turned to the team.

  “Maria has been found. She needs immediate medical attention,” Melinda said. “Phil and I can take care of this lunatic.”

  “Lunatic?” Bev asked, sounding offended. “I am perfectly sane!”

  “Of course,” Coulson said, being the one to roll his eyes this time.

  Then, two of their team members rushed forward to take Maria out of the building and somewhere else to get treated for her injuries. The rest of their team kept in position, making sure that Bev wouldn’t get out of hand.

  Melinda was a mix of fury and worry. She hid the latter within herself, choosing to display only her rage. Bev looked into Melinda’s eyes. Her fists were clenched, and the only thing he could read off her was “I’m prepared to rip you apart with my bare hands, cook you with my flames, and eat you for breakfast”. He maintained his neutral expression. Then, he looked at Coulson. His arms were folded, and he was smiling, but it was clear that he was only waiting for a good time to rip the living air out of Bev.

  Bev smirked. “You’re only holding off attacking me because you know that, in my hand, in this needle, lies the very ice of your darling Maria,” Bev said. Melinda got more agitated. The fire inside her simply spread further and hotter. The ice in the room melted faster and faster, with water dripping from the ceiling.

  “The moment this needle enters my arm, the ice is mine. I won’t stop. No matter what display of affection you’ve done, you can’t convince me that Maria Hill isn’t a mindless killer, who doesn’t deserve this level of power,” Bev announced, looking at Melinda. “She doesn’t have the capacity to love anyone. Not. Even. You.”

  That was the cue for Melinda to stop holding back. With a swift, strong kick, she tripped Bev’s right leg, making him stumble. She got back up quickly and used Bev’s surprised state to pull the needle-pole-whatever-the-hell-it-actually-was out of his hand. As he got up, Melinda tossed it to Coulson, who caught it and went to stand nearer to the team.

  “That’s mine!” Bev exclaimed.

  “Last time I checked, you said it contained something belonging to Maria,” Coulson replied calmly.

  “Well, it’s-”

  Once again, he couldn’t continue, for the air from his lungs and around him had been sucked up.

  “We really don’t like your voice,” Coulson said.

  Bev didn’t try to reply. Instead, he was struggling much more to breathe normally. He gasped and heaved, and it didn’t help when he looked up to find Melinda standing before him, her fingernails digging hard into her palm, teeth grit. And this time, she was smoking – literally. Out of her palms was the same thick black smoke her team had seen before. Bev was outright terrified.

  The air around him returned, but he hardly felt a difference. He was unable to move as Melinda walked up towards him. Raising a fist, she hit him across the face. He stumbled again, and got up, still trembling.

  He looked at her pitifully. “Remember my deal? It’s not too late for me to change my path and use someone else-”

  Melinda was livid. She was about to punch Bev again, but he gripped her smoking fist on time and stopped her. He tried to continue with his deal, but stopped when he felt his palm begin to burn. Yet, he didn’t lift it off, and instead tried to push it away.

  Melinda pulled him towards her, and he let go in surprise. She grabbed him with a burning hand and struck him with more force and hate than she’s hit anyone with before.

  “You don’t know Maria,” she said.

  She went at him one last time, and all anyone saw was red.


	7. Out of the Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the last chapter! I mean, the next one is more of an epilogue - so this is technically the last chapter. Thanks to those of you who have stuck with me in this one. I hope you like it.

The smoke in the room began to clear and light streamed in. The team standing around the door finally saw the scene clearly, and it was brighter than anything they’d seen before.

  Sprawled on the ground with his arm, stomach and neck burnt badly was Bev. He was clearly in a lot of pain, panting and heaving and groaning. Yet, he seemed insistent on talking. He cursed at Melinda, Coulson and Maria, called SHIELD a heartless organization, and made fun of powered humans. He kept stopping for large breaths of air, although Coulson was, in no way, manipulating the air around him. Melinda and Coulson’s team simply ignored his blabbering as backup took him out of the room.

  And there, left standing in the middle of the room was Melinda Qiaolian May as who she knew herself to be. She was, literally, shining brighter than ever. She seemed almost god-like standing there amongst her the orange light and thin smoke.

  Her arms were coated in flames that burned so high they touched the bare ceiling. More flames circled her, creating a burn in the air around her. The flames illuminated her darkened face with a soft light. Even from the doorway, they could feel the deadly heat.

  The ice in the room was defrosting at a quick pace, with most of the floors and ceilings no longer coated in frost, and the spikes around where Maria was lying had melted to the point where they could no longer take a distinct shape.

  There, the rest of the team watched Melinda in awe. Her flames had returned. They found themselves unable to speak or think of anything else, save Coulson. As he watched Melinda find her old power again, he gripped onto the needle-pole, reminding himself how important it was. The team moved aside as Bev was carefully brought out of the room – they had quite a bit of questioning to do.

  Melinda basked in the old feeling of her fire. Oh, how she’d missed it. All she wanted right now was to charge through the building, taking down the enemies with fire in her heart and her hands. However, she knew that she couldn’t do that. She’d cause too much chaos.

  So, with a deep breath, Melinda composed herself. She calmed her over-excited nerves, and soon, the fire began dying down and returning to her, taking the orange glow from the room as well. She felt the most confident she had been in ages. Turning to the team, she smiled.

  “The spark’s back up,” she said, showing her happiness for once.

  Still, the team had nothing to say. They mainly just looked at her as they tried to recover from the shock.

  “Now the threat’s gone, and Maria has been found. What are we waiting for? Let’s get back to the plane,” she said, walking towards them. She knew that she sounded too cheerful to be Melinda, but she didn’t care.

  Silently, the team listened to her and began walking out of the room, the basement and building, back to the plane. Melinda’s excitement didn’t last all too long. She remembered Maria and her injuries, and wondered whether she would survive. Hopefully she would.

  Because as far as Melinda knew, no matter how strong fire was, it wouldn’t be fire without ice.

 

* * *

 

_They’re one for traditions. This one tradition involves sitting on rooftops and talking. Of course, being at Maria’s apartment building instead of the SHIELD HQ isn’t really an excuse for them to not sit on the roof and talk._

  Neither was Maria being sleepy – so she insisted. Melinda kept telling her to get to bed, it was already 1 am, but Maria shook her head and said that she wasn’t going to sleep until they went to the roof and had at least three sentences worth of a conversation.

  So they climbed to the roof, sitting on chairs instead of the ledge, because having a tired Maria on the edge of a building was never and would never be a good idea. She ended up resting her head on Melinda’s shoulder and wrapping an arm around her waist.

  “Is it me, or are the stars brighter than usual?” Maria mumbled, looking up to the night sky.

  “There are more of them tonight,” Melinda replied.

  “The stars are so bright, Melinda, and so pretty. Like someone put a black cloth on the heavens and poked holes through it,” Maria whispered.

  Melinda smiled, looking at the sky as Maria said it to be. “Do you become a poet when you’re tired or something?”

  Maria tried to nod, but it just resulted in what was a small shift of her head. “I think so.” She had a small, dorky grin on her face.

  “The world is so much brighter when I know I won’t be seeing it for the next few hours,” Maria said again.

  “Definitely a secret poet,” Melinda replied. “I like sleep-deprived you.”

  “Even though I don’t remember anything I just said?” Maria asked, her voice getting quieter.

  “Mostly because of that,” Melinda said. She ran her fingers through Maria’s hair, leaning back onto her. Maria snuggled up against Melinda. She felt cozy and safe and the sky was so, so nice tonight. It was a shame she had to sleep on such a nice night, at such a nice time. But she closed her eyes, and let herself drown in the peace and dim light and Melinda.

  The next thing Melinda knew, Maria had fallen asleep on her shoulder, right there on the roof of the apartment building. Melinda sighed softy. The weight of the other woman on her shoulder and her soft snoring made Melinda feel human again. It had been a while since anyone had been so at peace around her that they could simply fall asleep on her like that. She liked the feeling. She put a hand on Maria’s shoulder.

  Sitting in the night air for a while longer, Maria kept on sleeping. Melinda knew that she’s either have to carry her back down or wake her up and bring her down. The first option seemed good for someone that was sleeping soundly, but not so good for someone who had to carry said person that was sleeping soundly. The second one was perhaps a little more dangerous, seeing that Maria was likely to fall asleep on her way back and tumble down the stairs or something.

  So once Melinda decided that she had been sitting on the roof for enough time (she’d only realized that it was 2.18 now), she stood off the chair. The movement woke up Maria, but momentarily.

  “Hmm? Melinda?” Maria asked drowsily.

  “Do you want to walk down or should I carry you?” Melinda asked in return.

  “Where?” Maria said.

  “You’re too tired to walk,” Melinda replied. “I’ll carry you.”

  Maria giggled. “Sounds nice.”

  And so, Melinda pulled Maria onto her bag, and for the moment of time where Maria was still awake enough to be aware of the situation, she wrapped her arms around Melinda’s neck to make sure she didn’t fall.  Melinda made her way downstairs, to the third floor, where Maria lived. As she arrived and unlocked the door, she heard Maria’s distinct sleep-breathing again.

  It was ridiculous how much she insisted they went to the roof although she fell asleep so quickly. And now, Melinda had to carry her back downstairs. She wasn’t too heavy, no, but it was troublesome. Melinda struggled to unlock the door and to go in with Maria’s weight on her back. Finally, she got around to entering.

  She shut the door behind her and made her way to Maria’s bedroom. Carelessly, she peeled Maria’s arms off her neck and let her fall onto the bed. Maria hit the mattress with a soft thud, and woke up momentarily.

  Maria groaned and shifted to a more comfortable position. In less than a minute, she was asleep once again. Melinda began walking out of the darkened room. She glanced back to the sleeping woman, whom she had left on her bed still in her coat and shoes. She gently closed the door behind her to make sure she didn’t wake Maria up again (though she’d fall right back asleep).

  “Good night, nerd,” Melinda muttered once the door behind her was shut.

_It was crazy, to think how at peace Maria could be around Melinda. It would carry on to be yet another thing that neither of them could understand._

 

* * *

  

Melinda was far more injured than she realized. She had various cuts and bruises from all the attacks, but they were nothing serious. They didn’t need too much tending to, yet there was a SHIELD medic there patching up Melinda’s small cuts.

  “No, that’s alright, it can heal by itself,” Melinda repeated once again. The medic said something else about ‘orders’ and ‘too old’, and carried on with her work.

  Then, Coulson walked through the door, in his usual grey suit. He looked at the medic.

  “Is there anything serious?” He asked.

  “No, sir,” The medic replied, not looking up from her work.

  “If it’s possible, could I have a private conversation with her?” Coulson asked.

  The medic nodded, gathering up some of her supplies. “Yes, of course.”

She walked out of the room in a hurry, leaving just Coulson and Melinda inside.  
  Coulson walked towards the table Melinda was sitting on.  
  “So,” he started. “I won’t ask you about the fire, because everyone else we know will.”

  Still, Melinda raised her left hand and watched as she lit the tip of her fingers on fire. The natural feeling of her fire back on her hands swallowed her in the most comforting way. She smiled to herself, still trying to get used to the amazement of her flames coming back to her. After all that time, the answer seemed to be ‘a burning love for Maria Hill and extreme anger’.

  “But I know you’re dying to know how Maria is right now,” Coulson continued. “Sorry we kept you in here so long. If we let you in there the moment you returned to the plane you’d probably have an emotional breakdown.”

  “I don’t get emotional breakdowns,” Melinda replied, eager to get on to the topic about her eternal soul mate, the ying to her yang, the wind beneath her wings – whatever they called Maria.

  “Anyway, good news. Maria will live. She’s lost a lot of blood, but they can fix it. And the needle with her ice powers? According to the agents who interrogated Bev on it, it can be injected back into her,” Coulson said.

  Unknowingly, Melinda began to smile. Maria will live to see the light again.

  Coulson looked at her. There was one last thing he needed to settle.

  “If you don’t mind me asking – what was that little moment back in the building with you and Maria?” He asked.

  Melinda felt this sudden rush of panic. She didn’t have the time to think about it. Was it just Maria’s weird, blood-deprived brain or was it a completely different thing? So, she just replied as honestly as she could.

  “I don’t know,” Melinda replied. “But I’m quite sure I love her.”

  Coulson smiled. “Will you mind if I tell you that I made a bet about you two against Sitwell?”

  “Hey, I would make a bet about me and Maria.”

  “Come on, you look like you’re going to blow up. She’s in the other room,” Coulson said.

  He didn’t need to say anything more. Melinda was already off the table and on her way out of the room when Coulson turned around to head to the door.

  “She’s still unconscious, though,” Coulson added.

  Melinda pushed the door open and headed out anyway. “Doesn’t matter.”

 

~

 

To her own surprise, Melinda didn’t actually have an emotional breakdown when she saw Maria.

  The girl looked weaker than ever, lying on the hospital bed with her dark hair fanned out. Her pulse was slow, but it was still there. Colour was beginning to return to her face, and Melinda felt the worry and tension within herself start to leave.

  She didn’t realize that she had been standing there for ages, looking at Maria. Only a while later when her feet began to ache and her shoulders felt weary did Melinda sit down on a chair beside the bed.

  Noon turned to afternoon, afternoon to evening, and evening to night, yet Melinda hardly got up from the chair beside the bed. Other people came and went, and when the clock struck eleven at night, Melinda began to wonder if she should leave. She got up, her legs numb from sitting down so long. She tried to leave, but somehow, nowhere else in the plane felt as safe as the small room Maria was in. So she took a short break and returned to the bedside.

  It was now eleven o’ five, and the night felt peaceful and silent. Melinda didn’t want the moment to end – serenity was so rare now. She closed her eyes and leaned back.

  It was eleven o’ ten when she opened them again. She tucked a lock of hair behind Maria’s ear, and the girl remained still, save for the slight rise and fall of her chest, moving with every slow breath she took.

  The next time Melinda looked at the clock, it was eleven-thirty. Clouds outside the window whizzed past her. They would be landing at the SHIELD HQ the next morning. She stroked the side of Maria’s face. Her right hand still bared the mark of the ice from that day years ago, although the recent return of her flames made it a pale blue instead of the dark indigo it once was.

  Soon, the clock struck twelve.

  So, there in the dark of the night, and under the artificial light of the small room, Melinda began counting down the seconds to the next time Maria opened her eyes, the next time her fingers touched Melinda’s, the next time she spoke.


	8. Epilogue: Opposites Attract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The epilogue and last chapter of the story.

“Are you feeling better today?” Melinda asked, watching the other woman open her eyes again. It had been more than a month – almost two, even – since the incident, and Maria hadn’t fully recovered. She had been released from the hospital, yes, but her physical condition wasn’t the best. She still felt dizzy and light-headed at times, but it was much better than before.

  Maria still wasn’t able to do anything too straining. No field missions, and she'd have to work shorter work hours (temporarily) said Fury, despite Maria’s protest. But it was best for her.

  It was eight in the morning on a Saturday, and Maria had just woken up from yet another night of deep and long sleep, like it had always been after she had been hospitalized. She hadn’t had any nightmares, strangely, and her most recent dream was nothing but outright puzzling (a green turtle was slowly climbing a mountain. That was just it – _what?_ )

  Her strange dreams aside, Maria smiled dazedly, being woken to the familiar face of Melinda.

  “’M fine. Almost perfect,” Maria mumbled, still half-asleep. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked at Melinda. She was almost angel-like, with the morning sun streaming through the windows and lighting up the room.

  “Sure you are,” Melinda replied, running a hand through Maria’s hair. Maria pushed herself up on the bed so that her back pressed against the wooden frame.

  Maria cupped the side of Melinda’s face, pulling her in gently to kiss her. Maria pulled away, grinning. It felt like two months ago, during her spur-of-the-moment decision to kiss Melinda in that strange building. It was amazing to think that a choice made when you were halfway in bleeding to death could earn you a girlfriend.

  “You know, last night, after you left the room, I did something,” Maria whispered.

  “Did that something involve accidentally breaking something?” Melinda asked.

  “It did break my mind,” Maria replied.

  “That doesn’t count. What is it?” Melinda said.

  Maria seemed to have suddenly switched to a focus mode. She raised her hands to a mid-level, and soon, a ball of ice began forming. It spread out, with little scales and carvings forming in the ice as it did so. Then, it began to take shape. It was an ice dragon. Melinda watched as Maria seemed to relax her tensed hands. The dragon continued hovering in mid-air.

  Then, with a small flick of her wrist, the dragon began moving. It made a loop, dived down, and circled Melinda, all with the graceful, smooth movements of what could be a real dragon.

  “You got it,” Melinda said, surprised. It was beautiful. It seemed like it was radiating light, with a faint blue being cast around the dragon wherever it moved to.

  “It’s brilliant,” Maria said. Eventually, she let the dragon go, with the bits of ice falling off and disappearing.

  After the last trace of it left, Melinda turned back to Maria.

  “You did it just like that? Last night, in the middle of a dark room?” Melinda asked.

  Maria nodded. “Remember last time? Years ago, when you told me to relax so it wasn’t so stiff and would move better?”

  Melinda paused for a moment, thinking. “I remember.”

  “Last night, before you left, you told me that I’d always have you,” Maria said, her voice growing softer. “After that, all I felt was calmness. Peace. Light.”

  Melinda stopped. She felt like her heart skipped a beat. Right now, there was nothing else that needed to be said, nothing else needed to be heard. There was silence between the two, and they just looked at one another, reading each other’s faces.

  Then, with swift movements, Maria formed the dragon again, this time quicker than before. Melinda formed her flame dragon. It took her a moment to get the designs right, and she glanced back up at Maria, who was occupied watching her.

  “I’m out of practice,” Melinda said, looking at her burning, imperfect fire dragon.

  “Don’t worry,” Maria said. “It’s still so lovely.”

  Then, the dragons began moving, with the ice as gentle and graceful as the element was. The fire dragon was tough, fierce, and warm, just like the element was.

  Melinda May and Maria Hill were fire and ice, contrasting and equaling out one another. But really, what was the dark without the light, sound without silence, and the heavens without hell?

  What was fire without ice?


End file.
